Kraken Up: We Need To Go Deeper Is Undersea FTL

Share this:

As I observed in my write-up of humans-and-fish-can-never-be-friends simulator FarSky, games rarely wade into the sea past their belly buttons, let alone delve 20,000 leagues under it. To be fair, there are good reasons for this: it’s wet and cold down there; also, 3D cameras go haywire, controls suffer, and drowning isn’t a lot of fun (by most definitions of the word). That’s not stopping We Need To Go Deeper, though. It’s a randomized, FTL-inspired submarine survivor about colossal creepy crawlies that lurk beneath the sea instead of the malevolent forces that go bump in space’s eternal night. Also, it’s co-op. First trailer below.

Here’s what you and your friends will be getting up… if you daaaaaaare:

“We Need to go Deeper is a 4-player cooperative submarine rogue-like set in a Jules-Verne-inspired undersea universe. In the game, you and your crew must embark on many voyages into a mysterious undersea trench known as The Living Infinite. To be successful in your mission, you and your crew will have to work together to pilot a submarine, as only with your submersible in-tact will you be able to live to see the bottom of The Living Infinite.”

“Part of our goal is to provide players with a game world that will be enjoyable and exciting to explore. Throughout a single voyage through Deeper’s randomized ocean, you could encounter anything from a band of submarine pirates, to an undersea cave full of monsters and treasure chests, to an underwater civilization that may help or hinder you on your journey – depending on what kind of civilization they wind up being.”

The deeper you go, the deadlier it gets, and your poor little sub looks about as durable as a soggy Subway sandwich. The key, then, is to be attentive to its needs, as you would be in any relationship in which you live inside someone and they protect you from krakens and stuff. Your sub is divided up into five sections, and you have to quickly defend and perform maintenance on all of them, lest they flood or become overrun by really rude otters or something.

It’s obviously still rather early, and the animations don’t look spectacular, but We Need To Go Deeper’s style, personality, and goals are admirable. The plan is to release it around the end of summer 2014. Best of luck, Deli Interactive, and may all your days be free of giant tentacles (unless you like that sort of thing).

39 Comments

I agree that the look (and apparently the gameplay) is not at all evocative of FTL, but the design is: randomized content and perma-death, gets harder as you go deeper into the unknown, with the main activity being to use your crew to hold your ship in once piece. Okay that’s a bit vague, but I think the games do have a fair amount in common.

Isn’t that enough to make it rather similar, though? I mean, the fact that you’re not just controlling a single lonely character already makes it distinct from 95% of roguelyckes (side note, they use “Procedural Death Dungeon” in their FAQ. I like that term.).

Doesn’t mean they’re the same game, of course, only that they’ve related in a Minecraft/Terraria kind of way.

The headline had me getting my hopes up. I got used to FTL’s real time with pause mechanics (though they were a turn-off when I first played the demo), but wonky platforming and ship-diving? That’s a bridge too far…or too deep under the bridge…or something. Count me out. The co-op stuff doesn’t help either.

I love FTL, but frankly, I’d prefer a version where I can just explore and keep going until the cold embrace of death finally takes the last of my crew away, instead of having that boss level. Partly because most attempts at killing the mothership fail hard, and partly because I’d love a more open, long term expedition. Maybe even with added needs to refill food, water, let your crew take a bit time off on a planet or something to maintain their sanity, uncover mysteries… What I want is basically FTL Star Trek, I guess.

Edit: Damn, sometimes I try to catch up on my RSS feed and don’t realise that the post I’m reading is already several days old and the comments are dead. Excuse my necrophile mistake.

It’s a Germanic word, essentially meaning “octopodes”. I don’t think that kray-ken is correct based on the vowel sound alone (although it probably should be a long vowel), and it’s also unlikely to be a diphthong, I think.

I would go with something like the long ‘a’ in father (or, depending on your particular accent, farther). Modern Norweigen and Swedish would be something like halfway between the above long ‘a’ and the long ‘o’ in or.

I registered to say that the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea refers to the horizontal distance traveled while under the sea. Vertically delving 20,000 leagues would put you about a third of the way to the moon, which admittedly is a pretty good idea for a game.

I like the concept but frankly I think I’d be too terrified to play it. That underwater colossus battle in Shadow of the Colossus destroyed my nerves to the point where I had to hand it off, and that wasn’t involving a monster big enough to put an entire ship in its mouth. Way scarier than either Amnesia. Brr..